WHILE time may not be on his side, Junior Wasps head coach Richard Tardy has called for patience as he waits for things to click into place ahead of January’s Caf U-17 championship.

Having watched his side toil against a composed Kenyan side in the final game of the just ended Tri-nations tournament (mini-Cecafa tournament), the Frenchman reckons that while recent results have covered the cracks, the general performance has been so paper thin and the fissures so cavernous; an indication that there is still plenty of repair work required.

Tardy insists that inexperience at the big stage is one of the factors hampering the side’s performance.

He noted that home pressure and inexperience could have been one of the factors that caused his players to miss a number of late chances as they scrambled against Kenya.

"We missed a couple of very good possibilities against Kenya but that is partly due to the inexperience in the team,” the 48-year-old conceded.

"I think expectations being piled on the team at the moment are probably expectations they are going to find difficult to match up to until such time we do more work together and they bed in better as a team.

"I am seeing very good signs that the bedding-in process is moving along nicely.

"I am not prepared at the moment to start getting worried over the fact we are in a tough group because this a tournament were only the best deserve to play in the World Cup.”

While winning the tournament would be a great milestone, Tardy’s target is to get to the semi-finals which in it self is an automatic ticket to next year’s Fifa U-17 World Cup in Mexico.

Caf U-17 Championship

Group A: - Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Senegal
Group B: - Gambia, Mali, Congo Brazzaville, Ivory Coast

Ends